Torrential rain fails to dent the appeal of this glamorous road rally in the spirit of the famous 1,000-mile road race in Italy.

“I’m not sure I should say this, but today is exactly 70 years since the Dambusters took off,” said classic car expert Simon Kidston as he interviewed departing competitors on the start line of this year’s Mille Miglia retrospective. Before that, my friend Stefano Pasini had texted me: “Looking glamorous in that Dambusters Bentley.”

What is it about the big, booming Bentley that invites such comparisons? British bulldog, that extraordinary supercharged engine, a scrap with the Germans, James Bond’s first-ever car; it’s got it all, although the Bentley’s peacetime origins sit more easily with modern sensibilities.

There were two Mercedes-Benz SSK’s in this year’s event. Low-slung, sinister arch enemies of the Blower Bentley, they were fast but flawed, gaining punctures, with copious oil leaks and even catching fire in Rome – we Brits were most sympathetic.

But then it’s easy to fall into the Mille Miglia trap, imagining that on Italy’s crowded roads you are re-enacting the great battles of the past. As chief executives, preening VIPs, celebs and star-gazing journalists like me crowd into the start in Brescia’s main square, it’s the cars that the crowds have come to see, not us.

They all know that in comparison with the greats such as Giovanni Bracco, Tazio Nuvolari, Stirling Moss and Rudolf Caracciola, there’s not one of us that could drive our way out of a wet paper bag.

And in biblical weather, it was the crowds who formed a supporting backdrop for this year’s running of the Storica Mille Miglia. Parts of Emilia-Romagna, hit by the earthquakes last May, are still held up with scaffolding and sticky tape, yet these wonderful and generous locals turned out in the middle of a soaking night to greet the cars and the crews – grazie mille to them all.

The original Mille Miglia ran just 24 times between 1927 and 1957 and was won by an Italian car 21 times. This open-road race took the lives of 56 people in 30 years and after Alfonso De Portago’s terrible crash in 1957 it was condemned by all, including the Vatican, and banned.

It returned as a rally with special stages for three years around 1960, and again as a three-day classic car parade/regularity in 1977.

One thousand miles in three days, doesn’t sound much, you could do it in less than 24 hours in a Ford Focus, but these are old and temperamental machines, without the brakes or engine cooling to comfortably mix it with modern traffic.

It’s something of an epic just to get around the route, which runs in a huge teardrop from Brescia, across to Ferrara, down the east side of the country to Rome and up the west side via Siena, Florence, Modena and back to Brescia.

Regular readers will know what I think about rally regularities (just like motorsport, with none of the fun), but when offered a chance to drive Bentley’s own Blower (tested elsewhere) on the event, it wasn’t a difficult decision. Bentley had entered a team of two Blowers, the Birkin team car which was raced at the 1930 Le Mans 24 Hours and the road car, which was also the demonstrator. They keep them well, but my steed had suffered a string of fuel-supply problems on last year’s Mille and, as it proved, this event, too.

Bentley is very much in the spirit of the late, great Ray Wiltshire when it comes to weather protection in its vintage fleet. The former Bentley Drivers’ Club chairman was once asked by an American woman how often the hood was erected on his vintage Bentley. “Madame,” he bristled, “never!”

Given that heavy rain had already started to fall in Brescia’s square before the start, it meant that the pile of wet weather gear amassed by my driving companion Richard Charlesworth and I was the size of a small buffalo. Struggling into it all was a regular chore over the three days.

You can only lose a rally like this, as penalty points cascade down for lateness, failure to maintain the right speed over piddling distances, failing to keep to the route, or being too early.

There are no formal prizes for great driving, except the appreciation of crowds. While some competitors adopt the plethora of modern time-keeping and global positioning satellite (GPS) technology, we had nothing more sophisticated than a wind-up stopwatch and the road book. We’d be putting the do back into derring.

And what crowds there were. Cheering, stamping, clapping and encouraging more noise and speed from the 375 competitors. From the heroic mariachi band which follows the event, women so gorgeous they’d make the Pope throw a bunga bunga party in the Vatican, shyly waving bambini, lovely dancing old ladies, excitable teenagers and at every stop a glamorous donna would hand us a bag of sweetmeats and chilled water.

Then there were those specially recruited police motorcycle outriders who could whisk you through a city faster than any satnav. “We’ve got a new app,” said Richard as the big Bentley scorched through Terni behind such a motorcycle cop. “It’s called ‘Politzia’.”

Fuel pumps, don’t talk to me about fuel pumps. To be fair, the grot in the Bentley’s bottom tank will have not helped the longevity of the brand-new double-ended SU pump, but the view of the rest of the rally streaming past in the rain as we spent three hours stuck on the side of the autostrada at midnight was galling. And you never get that time back.

Once behind, you are chasing your place for the rest of the rally knowing that short of an act of God striking down every other fuel pump, you will never catch up.

Not that there was any lack of trying, you understand. After eating our wiggolino (a sweet and not, sadly, a lewd suggestion), we stormed the hill up to San Marino on slippery roads, the Bentley blasting its song and sliding through the turns harried by a madly driven Alfa Romeo. I finally yielded the lead braking into a roundabout, whereupon the Alfa driver slithered past and spun completely round – ha!

He who leads in Rome is never first home, goes the old MM saying. We were anything but, though no one minded as the cavalcade roared around this world heritage site in chaotic order. The Colosseum, the Vatican and the Pantheon, the Bentley left a trail of hydrocarbons round them all.

At over 700km, the last day is the longest and also most spectacular. Siena’s Piazza del Campo, Florence’s Duomo, the Raticosa and Futa passes are part of the route, as is the Ferrari factory and its Fiorano test track, then north via the stunning Piazza del Comune in Cremona and back to Brescia.

By now the on-tour mentality is rife. Richard and I are collecting sexy policewomen (Rome cinched it), on the Futa Pass we diced with a Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse driven by Harry Metcalfe of Evo magazine (it’s about carving through traffic and people yield to the imposing Bentley but not the Bug), and then there were snacks; Italian pork scratchings (disgusting), crocodillio, a chilli-flavoured nutty fudge, more wiggolino and torone, an almond flavoured bar as hard as moon rock, which splintered in my mouth and blasted back over my face leaving me resembling a reversed-out Dalmatian.

The rain returned, yet still the Italians turned out to see and cheer the mad motorists and their road-stained cars. Half of me is still out there, on that long final leg into Brescia, howling along the plains of northern Italy, face lit by the chiaroscuro glow of the map light, chasing the yellow puddle of the headlamps, the rhythm of the double declutch, the flickering ammeter, the dab of the brakes and the crackling of the exhaust. Taking each corner as if it will win the love of your life, as fast as you dare and then some. Hour upon hour, mile upon mile, a road without end.

Well, that’s what it felt like until the fuel pump stuttered again, losing us an hour or two as our mechanics Ray Steele and Robert Morris coaxed the old girl back into life. And as if it had had enough of all this ill treatment, the gallant 83-year-old machine burned out its cooling fan fuse as we finally rolled on to the finishing ramp. Wreathed in steam we took the applause, proud, but secretly knowing that it was all about the car, not us.

We caroused like the night they invented Champagne and as I wearily glugged the last glass Richard reminded me that on Monday I would no longer be a Bentley Boy, but plain old A English. No popsies offering wiggolino, no generous, smiling crowds, no sexy sunglasses attitude from leggy Rome policewomen. Where are my sweets, why isn’t everyone waving at me?

It might be just a cavalcade, but the Mille Miglia is unlike anything else and it’s the only regularity worth doing.